The Art of Beauty, or, The best methods of improving and preserving the shape, carriage and complexion : together with, The theory of beauty.

Date:
1825
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The Art of Beauty, or, The best methods of improving and preserving the shape, carriage and complexion : together with, The theory of beauty. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

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    The blue profound, and, hovering o’er the sun, She darts her swiftness up the long career Of devious comets, and looks back on all the stars.” Akenside. Now, in all this rapturous flight of lofty and ge- nuine poetry, where is to be traced any one of the Alisonian associations ? No—it is a paltry and partial philosophy that would thus chain down the range of human delight and of human pleasure to its narrow and nibbling explana- tions ; and such a philosophy could not have been the offspring of any mind that could range at large through the works of God, and measure, by the mag- nificence around it, the littleness of its own attributes, and the darkness and dimness of its own fancied glory and its own dreaming pride of exaltation. Mr. Alison’s referring the sublimity of great depths to our associations with hell, proceeds upon the notion that fear and terror are the causes of sublimity. He takes it for granted, without proof; and it would certainly require proof, and strong- proof, before we can give it our unqualified assent. So far from being true, it seems to us that sublimity is lost when fear takes possession of us, and sublimity is only restored when the fear departs. We would here make the very necessary distinction between the real sensations of fear and a description of such sensations or their effects by the poet or the painter. Such descriptions, if well managed, always partake